Veterans find jobs, niche

Joseph Femenia is a former Navy SEAL who completed missions in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Today he works on Wall Street for Goldman Sachs as a "senior high yield trader.”
(Photo:
Robert Deutsch/USA TODAY
)

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might have left Rachel Gutierrez, Joe Femenia and Mervin Roxas embittered or even suicidal as they have countless other veterans.

The wars could have killed them: Gutierrez, an Army sergeant, was nearly shot by one of her own soldiers in Baghdad; Femenia, a Navy SEAL, went on missions in both wars; Roxas, a lance corporal, was caught in a roadside bomb blast on the Iraqi border with Syria.

They instead embody narratives that are seldom discussed. Each — like many of the 2.6 million who served in the wars — did not wind up on the deficit side of war's ledger.

Rather, they reinvented themselves. They built on their warrior foundation even as they left it behind.

They entered a postwar phase of life and say they are thriving: The former GI runs a consulting firm and organizing community service; the ex-Navy SEAL has a lead position on Wall Street; and the Marine veteran is rising in the ranks of the Easter Seals organization.

Far from the scandal over delays at the Department of Veterans Affairs in treating thousands of former servicemembers, Gutierrez, Femenia and Roxas live life on their own terms.

"We are portrayed as this damaged generation of veterans," says Gutierrez, 32, who lives near Phoenix. "We're not liabilities to this nation. We're assets."

Here are three stories you might otherwise never hear:

'A PASSION FOR HELPING'

Gutierrez emerged from the cauldron of Iraq violence in 2005 to become a businesswoman.

Platoon Leader Rachel Gutierrez (right, The Mission Continues) talks with Kristin Fray (2nd from left, Therapeutic Programs Manager) and John Johnston (2nd from right, Physical Plant Supervisor, both Arizona State Veteran Home about about making improvements to an outdoor patio at the Arizona State Veteran Homein Phoenix, Arizona. Looking on is Squad Leader Luis Camacho (left, The Mission Continues).
(Photo:
Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic
)

She was all of 23. But Gutierrez had gained a year of experience in a very dangerous place as a non-commissioned officer and human resources specialist assisting in disseminating identification badges for U.S. military personnel and defense contractors.

Growing up in a Detroit suburb, she had enlisted in the Army at 17 as much to flee a decrepit, drug-ridden neighborhood as to find a new future. "I wanted to get out," Gutierrez says.

Gutierrez went to war in 2004. Interacting with contractors, she paid attention to the buildup of military manpower and infrastructure and grew comfortable communicating and negotiating with people of different cultures.

There were risks, such as daily mortar attacks. During one convoy preparation, a U.S. soldier accidentally discharged a machine gun, the rounds passing close to Gutierrez. She and others were sent an e-mail — her address found on a cellphone acquired by insurgents — a video showing a captured friend, a Nepalese soldier, being executed.

When she mustered out in 2005, she studied interior design in college and obtained her MBA.

After graduate school, she formed her own consulting firm, Version2, and took a fellowship in 2012 with The Mission Continues, a Missouri-based, non-profit organization that offers a pathway for veterans to perform community service. "The Mission Continues was so attractive to me because it was these veterans who found a unit again and were part of a family again. And I missed that," says Gutierrez, who lives in Phoenix with her 14-year-old daughter, Alexis La Duke, and 5-year-old son, Ace.

Under the fellowship, she helped raise $14,000 to renovate and upgrade a living facility for at-risk and homeless female veterans, bonding with several who had served in her war.

“We don’t have to be victims all the time.”

Veteran Mervin Roxas, who lost an arm in Iraq

Last year, The Mission Continues named her "platoon leader" for a group of more than 100 veterans who perform community work in Phoenix. Their latest effort in March was raising $13,000 to renovate a transitional living facility for male veterans.

The work has galvanized Gutierrez, instilling a sense of purpose and easing her transition from war. "I've always had a passion for helping others," she says, "but I didn't realize, until reflecting later, that I love it, and I need it. I need it to survive."

BATTLEFIELD TO WALL STREET

There were instincts, reactive skills, creative ways of thinking that Joe Femenia honed as a Navy SEAL team leader and that needed an outlet of expression in life after combat. The answer he found: Wall Street.

He is a managing director at Goldman Sachs, head of U.S. leveraged loan trading.

A native of the Bronx who grew up on the campus of New York state's Maritime College where his father was an engineering professor, Femenia found a future of service in uniform a comfortable idea for a young swimming athlete.

He became intrigued with the SEALs, drawn to their informal command structure that encourages creative thought and a free-flowing exchange of ideas. "I felt I was part of a really elite organization that did great things for our country," says Femenia, who joined the commandos in 1998.

He would be part of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and two combat deployments to Afghanistan, conducting reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines.

Nearing the end of a seven-year, active-duty commitment in 2005, Femenia was ready to return home, but he had a quandary: finding a career to "offer me a mental challenge, daily stimulation and excitement," he recalls.

Between deployments, he was accepted into Columbia Business School, where a retired executive mentored him about the adrenalin-fueled world of trading over-the-counter corporate debt. "You're taking risk. But it's an art, not a science," says Femenia, who joined Goldman Sachs as an associate after obtaining his MBA in 2007. Transitioning from the battlefield to the fast pace of the trading floor offered personal fulfillment, says Femenia, who lives with his wife and two young sons in Connecticut.

"I'm obviously very proud of my background (as a Navy SEAL), but it's sort of something I did in the past," he says. "My benchmark now is not that I was a SEAL, it's how I perform at work and as a husband and dad."

Femenia says he wants to help his brethren make that same transition. He helped build a Goldman Sachs program that recruits, trains and employs veterans. "These young men and women have just tremendous skill sets," Femenia says. "They're smart. They have integrity. They're risk-takers. They're disciplined. They can work as a team. Those are things that are so important to corporate America."

STILL SERVING OTHERS

Mervin Roxas says it was only after he helped others fit into the world that he fit in himself.

Mervin Roxas in 2012. He lost his left arm to a roadside bomb in Iraq, but is now a supervisor at Easter Seals. “We don’t have to be victims all the time,” he said.(Photo: USA TODAY)

The Philippine native joined the Marines after the 9/11 terror attacks. Twice he went to war, during the Iraq invasion in 2003 and a year later serving on the border with Syria as the Iraqi insurgency intensified.

It was there on July 5, 2004, as Roxas manned a machine gun mounted on the roof of an unarmored Humvee, that a roadside bomb exploded. The force ripped his arm off at the shoulder, shattering his jaw and punching a hole through his right cheek.

His dream of becoming a police officer was gone. "I had to kind of go back to the drawing board and look at other options," says Roxas, 32.

One day, he came across a jobs booth for Easter Seals, the non-profit organization devoted to helping those with autism and other disabilities. Roxas was intrigued. "They serve people with disabilities and get to do all these cool things with them," he says. He was hired in 2008 while attending college and taught life and social skills to one severely disabled, non-verbal client and another with moderate autism.

Roxas worked with them for two years, helping to plan their week, guiding them through tasks such as working at a library or helping at a homeless shelter.

Roxas says he loved it. "It was a way for me to serve again," he says. He began seeing parallels between their experience and his.

"A lot of people just kind of write them off as, 'Oh, they're disabled. They really can't do much.' But then when they're actually out there helping other people, it's pretty cool," he says. "It kept me from being bitter."

Easter Seals took notice. In 2012, he took over supervision of more than 60 life skills coaches.

He graduated from Cal State and got married. He and his wife, Maribeth, have a 10-month-old son, Gideon.

Roxas has been asked to assist in Easter Seals' effort to help transitioning veterans learn the lessons he's acquired.

A key principle is simply allowing yourself to come home, Roxas says. "We don't have to be victims all the time," he says. "We don't have to be recipients all the time. A lot of times, we can serve other people. I made peace with the fact that most of the work that needs to be done, I had to do. ... Good stuff snowballs after that."